Progressive Rummy by Nikki Katz

Progressive Rummy is played in a series of hands with varying wild cards. You'll need four to six players and a standard deck of fifty-two cards. The objective of Progressive Rummy is to win points by arranging your eight cards into melds. In the first deal, aces are wild. In the second deal, twos are wild. In the third deal, threes are wild, and so on. After the thirteenth deal, when kings are wild, the first game is considered complete and the player with the fewest points wins.

A random dealer is chosen and deals out eight cards, one at a time, face down, to each player. The dealer turns up the next card, face up, and this begins the discard pile. The remainder of the cards are placed face down next to the discard pile and become the stockpile. Deal continues to alternate after each hand.

Play begins with the first player to the dealer's left. In your turn, you may take the top card in the discard pile or the top card from the stockpile. You may then lay down a meld of three or more cards in a sequence of the same suit (such as 7). You may also add cards to melds that have already been laid down if you can. There is no minimum or maximum number of cards you can lay down. You end your turn by discarding a card. If a wild card has been played, you may replace that card with its natural card and then use the wild card to complete a meld in your hand that you wish to lay down. Play continues multiple times around the table.

The first player to discard all of his cards ends that hand, and the hand is scored. All players still holding cards add up the points contained in the cards that they hold, not including the melds. Face cards (jack, queen, and king) score ten points each, and the remaining cards score their value. If you hold a wild card for that hand, the wild card is worth twenty points instead of its normal value. The player with the fewest points after the thirteenth hand wins the game.

To make it easier on the scorekeeper, start off the game by writing A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K down the left side of the paper and the names of the players across the top of the paper. This way each player knows what wild-card hand it is, and the scorekeeper can keep track of the scores.